MIFF: Too many films to watch in a lifetime

Among the screenings today, on the first day of MIFF Stefan Kubicki's short fiction Against Night, from the USA, Tashi and the Monk, directed by Johnny Burke and Andrew Hilton, form the UK, and Original Copy, directed by Florian Heinzen-Ziob and George Heinzen, from Germany, deserve special mention.

We shall cover each of these films in details, in a following post. Meanwhile, let us see what else were offered today.

There was a special package from Berlinale consisting of six shorts. Dawit by David Jensen & Sophie Biesenbach from Germany, RGB XYZ directed by David O'Reilly from Ireland, Symphony No. 42 directed by Reka Bucsi from Hungary, To Thy Heart directed by Ewy Borysevicz from Poland, Wonder by Maria Mizue from Japan-France, and Kamakura by Yoriko Mizushiri from Japan.

There was a special package from Dresden film festival as well, consisting of eight films. Betonfrass (Brick Sick) directed by Karsten Kranzusch from Germany, Foley Artist directed by Toni Bestard from Spain, Herman the German directed by Michael Binz from Germany, Reizigers in de Nacht (Traveller into the Night) directed by Ena Sendijarevic from Netherlands, We will Stay in Touch About It directed by Jan Zabeil from Germany, Bar directed by Pascal Flocks from Germany, Aubade directed by Mauro Carraro from Switzerland, and A Single Life directed by three directors - Job, Joris and Marieke from Netherlands were the "best of fest" pick-ups.

Quite a handful of students workshop films were shown. These PSA film from Ryan TV handled subjects such ranging from noise pollution, blood donation and honking in theh street to dyslexia, emotional safety and global warming.

In the national New Media and Animation Competition Payal Kapadia's The Lat Mango Before the Monsoon, Biju Toppo's The Hunt, Viplab Mazumder's Third Gender, and Shivendra Singh Dungarpur's The Immortals, Tanumoy Bose's Man and the Ocean, Swapnil Pawar's Maharashtra Desha, Kireet Khurana's Dewang, Alpika Singh's Eyes on You, Debanjan Nandy's Reflection, Harshal Wadkar's Bicycle, Mithunchandra Chaudhury's The Road Less Travelled, Rashmee Amdekar's Let's Educate All, Nations of Danger directed by a team of four - Ankita, Disha, Elisha and Firdaus, Laxminarayan Devda's Marriage Preparations and Other Stories were screened.

And interesting film of the day was Rinku Kalsy's For the Love of a Man, from Netherlands.

If we remember that films are personal, as well as, social expressions to communicate to other people across, and outside, the group, and to oneself; if we further remember that cinema, and indeed anything called art, is used by man for his group's survival - physical and emotional - in quite the Neo-Darwinian manner, we would understand why so many filmmakers from across the globe make films on almost anything.

MIFF, unlike many other film festivals, encourage the filmbuff and the household activist on life's uncertainties and inequalities to make films, to communicate to the group. Workshops on digital cinematography Nandan Saxena and Masterclass by Mukesh Sharma drew a good crowd to meet this purpose.

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About Editor-In-Chief

Murtaza Ali Khan is an independent film critic, journalist, columnist, and blogger based out of New Delhi, India. He is the Founder/Editor-in-Chief of the award-winning entertainment blog A Potpourri of Vestiges. He is the Co-Founder of Ed Wood Productions. He has been writing movie reviews at IMDb for over seven years. He is a Columnist at The Huffington Post. He is a Guest Columnist at Cafe Dissensus (New York) and has contributed to publications like The Hindu, The Quint, and DailyO. Previously, he has also contributed to sites like Desimartini and Jamurra Blog. He is also on the guest panel for live discussions on the television channel News X.